Solutions looking for problems

I hate when someone comes up with a new feature or technology and only after that start looking for a problem.

Worse still is when someone looks at it with the same attitude of “if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

I ran into this today with the cover that I got with my Kindle Voyage. The Kindle is spectacular like I had expected it — that’s a review for another day. The cover is bad though.

It started with the idea of the Origami cover Amazon used for the Fire tablets. It’s a cool idea that lets you prop up those tablets in a variety of orientations. Coolness. There you get a hammer.

The Kindle Voyage is the nail.

186g. Nice.

130g? Not so nice. All the magnets in the cover weight a ton. (well, 130g)

Who props open a book like that anyway?

Not only that, but the cover is now floppy. Oh, and the cover opens like a notepad not a book. This is only half the problem though. The bigger problem is that the schmick capacitive page turn “buttons” you work with your thumb. The way you hold the Kindle+Cover combination forces you to cantilever the weight of the combo onto your thumb. Congrats, you just turned a page accidentally.

Sometimes you need to take a step back before swinging that hammer at what you perceive to be a nail.